


scene in monochrome

by radialarch



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M, Post-Season/Series 01, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-10-13 13:40:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10514859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radialarch/pseuds/radialarch
Summary: Here are memories bound up in smoke.(Yuuri, Victor, and a single cigarette.)





	

Victor comes home late.

Yuuri doesn’t know the exact nature of the phone call that had made all expression wipe off Victor’s face, only that he’d had a hurried conversation with Yakov afterwards, and then turned to Yuuri to ask, “Yuuri, will you let Yakov take over coaching for you today?”

“All right,” he’d said, and not any of the other sentences fluttering wildly in his chest: _are you okay,_ and _who was that,_  and _let me touch you, let me kiss the laughter back into your mouth_.

His Russian is still a work in progress, the syllables blurring into nonsense far too easily, but he knows the word for _father_  and he knows that Victor never talks about his parents.

So Victor had left, and Yuuri had painted bruises onto his sides and hammered the first half of his step sequence into something that made Yakov look, if not approving, then at least less stony, and then he’d gone home and waited on the sofa with Makkachin for Victor to come back, until he’d fallen asleep.

When he jerks out of a half-remembered dream, the apartment is dark but the clear glass door to the balcony is open.

Yuuri leaves Makkachin dozing across the cushions and makes his way to the door, slow. Victor is a tall dark shape against the backdrop of streetlights, the headlights of passing cars, small windows of orange and yellow that are other people living out their lives. He stands there for a minute, his hands thrust into the pockets of his coat, then lets out a quiet sigh.

The next sound Yuuri hears is so familiar, so reminiscent of home — Hasetsu, the onsen, Mari stealing out for a moment of silence, the guests and the ashtrays and the shot glasses left on the table — that it takes him a second to realize how incongruous it is _here_ , in Saint Petersburg.

“Victor,” he says, and his voice comes out burred with the sleep he still hasn’t shaken off. “Are you _smoking_?”

Victor turns, a hand cupped over the small glowing ember at his mouth. With his other hand, he tucks the lighter back into his pocket.

“You don’t smoke,” Yuuri says, stupidly. He’s never seen him smoke. He’s never smelled it on him, either, the sharp scent that winds its way into clothing and hair and fingers.

Victor laughs, and the sound is like cut glass. “It was a gift,” he says. “Bad manners to turn down a gift, yes?”

Yuuri steps out onto the balcony, feels the cool night air on his face and the cold bleeding through his socks. Takes another step forward, until he can see Victor’s face in the dim light, the shivers running down his shoulders. Can smell the smoke rising up from the cigarette, before it’s whipped away by the night.

There are a lot of questions Yuuri could ask, but the one that comes out is, “Have you ever smoked before?”

A stiff shrug. “Yakov would have killed me.”

One more step, and then he’s close enough to touch Victor. He reaches up to take the cigarette from Victor’s mouth. “I have.”

Victor isn’t expecting that. The whole of his body melts into the shape of a question.

“Minako used to,” Yuuri says. “Kept saying she should quit. She did, but not before Mari picked it up from her.” He lifts the cigarette up, and Victor’s head turns to follow: the red glow, slowly crumbling itself into ash.

“I’d steal them out of Mari’s packs,” he confesses. “Shared one with Yuuko, a pair of thieves. But this — you said it was a gift.”

“Yes.” Victor’s voice is hoarse. There are flecks of light reflected in his eyes.

“So let’s treat it like one,” Yuuri says, and takes a long, slow drag.

The smoke prickles in his lungs, harsh and hot, but he doesn’t exhale just yet. He looks at Victor — leans in, and watches Victor tilt forward like it’s instinct. Maybe it is, now; there’s something as intangible as smoke, as permanent as the grooves that scent has worn in his memories, that binds the two of them, so they can’t help but to come together. Always the point halfway in between.

He breathes out against Victor’s lips, and Victor opens his mouth and breathes in.

The smoke curling up, the onsen with a soccer match and the sound of patrons blending into meaningless noise, the way Mari breathed out into the sky under the eaves, the place outside Minako’s studio she used to slip to like clockwork, Yuuko coughing, the sharp staccato shape of her gasps. And then the shift, the way his memories rearrange for smoke to wrap around one more thing: the wet hot line of Victor’s mouth, fitted like a puzzle piece against his.

What is it like for Victor, Yuuri thinks. What does the smoke mean for him; what will it.

The cigarette is burning down. The gray wisps slide from Victor’s mouth and fall apart.

“Again,” he says, raw. Something inside him, grinding apart, being rewritten.

So Yuuri breathes in, breathes out; Victor breathes out, and in; and when the glow is nearly to Yuuri’s fingers Victor takes the ghost of the cigarette, only ash and memories now, and drops it onto the cold tile of the balcony. Presses one dainty shoe against it, until it’s a dark smear.

“Come inside,” Yuuri says. “Get warm.”

Victor looks at him like he’s stopped understanding English. “I am,” he says, a ragged rasp. And then: “Thank you.”

They go inside, where Victor falls asleep with a fevered flush splashed high across his face. In the morning, Yuuri takes the rest of the pack from Victor’s pocket and flushes it down the toilet, one by one.

**Author's Note:**

> Slightly cleaned up commentfic from [tumblr](http://radialarch.tumblr.com/post/159059400211).
> 
> Yeah, I. might have a smoking kink. #noregrets


End file.
